The cast and crew of The Good Place are all mensches.
“While promises of anonymity once made sperm and egg donations appealing to many, those promises are becoming impossible to keep. Aside from the practical and shockingly easy ways donor-conceived children are finding their donors — like commercial DNA tests, or the trusty ol’ internet — some jurisdictions are changing their laws, and banishing anonymity altogether.”
Bitcoin – still a bad idea.
“As someone who loved the deconstructionist bent of The Last Jedi, and especially the way it brought Luke’s journey to an end, I’d love the new Picard series to do something similar. Not directly literal of course—Jean-Luc doesn’t have to pass on at the end of it, the way Luke quietly dissipates into the Force in The Last Jedi. But in terms of having heroes who so wholly represent the greatest ideals of their respective franchises go through a trauma that leaves them challenged and conflicted, a conflict that lets them grow and develop as deeper characters, while reminding us of the grand ideals they represent? Hell yes.”
“While there is some difference of opinion between different Flat Earth groups, I think it’s fair to say that the overall belief is that sustained spaceflight is impossible, or at the very least cost-prohibitive.”
“Yet this particular episode from history carries a clear warning about the poisonous effects of thoughtless bigotry and small-mindedness. It also underscores how, indeed, America has changed, perhaps irrevocably – though not in the way Ingraham sees.”
“So here’s how I think Jaws is a hilarious, great, non-racist, very white movie, that plays around with some of the same emotions explored in the very racist and evil The Birth of a Nation (1915).”
And while we’re on the topic of shark-based movies, here’s how The Meg stacks up against Jaws: The Revenge, and a scientific fact-check of all the shark activities in The Meg.
“Trump is a cretin and a racist and a buffoon. But we fool ourselves if we don’t recognize that he is a sort of savant, a con man but an instinctive political animal who has a deep hold on a big chunk of the country. Language, tone and voice are at the heart of that. Understanding how this happened is well worth our time.”
RIP, Brigadier General Mike P. Cokinos, decorated WWII veteran and member of a longstanding political family from Beaumont.
“This leaves me with a question. Did Noah take Neanderthals on the ark?”
“While some California cities, like Oakland and Berkeley, have no psychic-specific rules, other places care a great deal about how people tell fortunes for money. In San Francisco, the Police Department gets involved.”
“The history of sports is littered with hardass coaches who blur the line between intense discipline and bullying, and become folk heroes when success follows.”
“No one in this exchange is surprised, because they all know Trump so well. Pierson and Manigault-Newman are actually convinced he said it. That’s one of the stranger paradoxes of this political era: Trump’s political opponents know who he is. His aides know who he is. Americans don’t need a tape to know who Trump is, or what he represents. He’s already shown who he is. He shows it every day.”
“Multiple legal experts told TheWrap this week that while Omarosa’s actions may have been duplicitous and underhanded, anyone expecting criminal charges will be waiting a long time as it is perfectly legal in Washington, D.C., for one party in a conversation to record it — even without the permission (or knowledge) of the other parties.”
“Rolling the Dice on Ironstache”.
“President Trump’s tax cuts all but guaranteed that 2018 would be a fantastic year for shareholders. Predictably, corporations are taking advantage of this windfall not by funding other companies or boosting worker pay, but by showering their shareholders with cash. Of course, 2017 wasn’t a bad year for shareholders either. Indeed, the last four decades have seen shareholders take home larger and larger slices of the economic pieords. Is this how justice is supposed to work, with TV supplementing the courts in the battle for a criminal’s reputation?”
RIP, Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul.
“When Sarah Sanders and the ACLU Teamed Up for Voting Rights”.
“Importantly, Clinton and Nixon intended to cover their tracks. Lewinsky and the Plumbers, as they were called, knew something each president wanted kept out of sight. So the question not being asked, in the case of Manigault Newman, is: What does she know that Trump wants to keep quiet?”
RIP, Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General.
RIP, Bob Bass, former NBA coach and general manager, mostly with the Spurs.
The Nation article on corporate distributions to shareholders misses a few important points. The biggest is that companies started buying back shares because it is more tax efficient for shareholders than dividends, since dividends are taxed as ordinary income, while share buybacks can use the long term capital gains treatment. This could be fixed by eliminating the taxes on dividends, as dividends have already been taxed at the corporate level. Corporations also pay dividends and buy back shares, because there aren’t enough investments to make at the desired risk and return level. This is a good thing, as we’ve seen with companies that went out of business because they expanded too much. I am much more bothered by companies like Apple sitting on huge cash piles, failing to invest or return profits to shareholders
If Trump was recorded saying the ‘n’ word, so what? Our last president said it on tape, wrote it, and nobody cared then, so why should I care now? Let’s say a p**** type tape comes out. ZOMG! There will be a media feeding frenzy, Trump haters will once again proclaim that this is ze end of Le Drumpf, and then, poof, nothing will happen. His base will not abandon him, because he’s getting results.
At this point, it’s just kind of sad and pathetic that the TDS folks still think that THIS time, they will get Trump. It’s like Wil E. Coyote thinking he’s gonna get the Roadrunner.
Ross,
Apple WAS sitting on huge piles of cash overseas. Apple repatriated billions in offshore profits, some of which they are spending on new facilities and an expected 20,000 new jobs here in the US.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-17/apple-expects-38-billion-tax-bill-on-overseas-repatriated-cash
This is a direct result of Obama’s economic policies finally bearing fruit.